Debate contribution: Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Keith Buchanan on .
- MLA
- Mr Keith Buchanan
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 16 September 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Executive Committee Business
- Heading
- Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5111374
Read the official Assembly record
Text
My comments will be short. First, I congratulate my colleague, Peter, who is taking up the Committee Chair. Deborah is probably watching. I do not know which camera to wave at — normally, we get an indication — but I wish her well, and I wish Peter well. I have only two brief comments. A lot of the issues have been covered, and I am not going to get into the depths of the Bill. First, on the clause on the hosepipe ban, I have a query about how the domestic allowance will be covered on farms. Maybe the Minister will cover that issue. What thought has been put into the domestic allowance? Also, the Minister mentioned that the flood protection grants would move from £10,000 to £13,000. I have always queried the flood protection grants because they protect the building, for example, the house or the garage of a standard dwelling, but it does not protect the property. There were a few incidents where, if the property had been protected, it would have been cheaper than protecting the physical house. It depends how you look at that. I appreciate that we can get into the nuts and bolts of this — it is probably not the day for that — but those are two things that jump out at me immediately. There are other things that we can go through in more detail, but this is not the day to do it. If the Bill passes, we will have further communication tomorrow from officials and research papers that can go through the issues and go into them in more depth. However, those are two things to look at: the farm aspect of the 20% relief and how we protect the property and not only the domestic building as such, which is the way that this is worded. There are a few other wee lines — I will not go into them — about cleaning a private motor. There are terms that use the word "hosepipe" and terms that do not. We can argue about that all day. There are wee terms that need to be tweaked, but this is not the day. I will not talk all day on this, you will be glad to hear. I look forward to the meeting tomorrow and working with my colleagues across the House on this — all of them.
Thank you.
400 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not qualifying”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.02 (qualifying needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not qualifying).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.89).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-qualifying threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.02 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.01 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.89 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.02 | At or below not-qualifying threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 1.00 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
| Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy | 0.00 |
| Sport (including the GAA), the arts and cultural bodies | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:13 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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